Welcome to Nanomaterials and Spintronics Lab at Bryn Mawr College

Nanostructured materials are materials with one or more dimensions at the nanoscale (10-7-10-9 meters). Examples of nanostructured materials include 2-dimensional ultrathin films, 1-dimensional nanowires, 0-dimensional nanodots, and more complex structures that could have a combination of these characteristics. Nanostructured materials often exhibit new and enhanced properties over their bulk counterparts, so they not only offer ideal material systems for exploring fundamental physics, but also hold promise for applications in data storage and sensing, energy generation and storage, and biomedical engineering. The discovery of the giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect in nanostructured layered composite (2007 Nobel Prize in Physics) is a great example.

One emerging research area in nanoscience that is of interest to our group is Spintronics. We seek to exploit electron spin and its associated magnetic moment, as well as electron charge, to create a brand new kind of electronics. Spintronic devices, combining the advantages of magnetic materials and semiconductors, are likely to be stable, fast and capable of novel data storage schemes while also being energy-efficient. Such devices could contribute to the development of quantum computers and quantum communication, thus dramatically changing the information technology of the future.

We are always on the lookout for talented and enthusiastic undergraduate and graduate students to be a part of our young research group. Interested parties should contact Xuemei May Cheng at xcheng@brynmawr.edu.